Earlier this week, romance-author-turned-gubernatorial-candidate-turned-actress-turned-gubernatorial-candidate-again Stacey Abrams made the stunning claim that “there’s no such thing as a heartbeat at six weeks.” She added, “It is a manufactured sound designed to convince people that men have the right to take control of a woman’s body.”
Oh, right… fetal heartbeats are just some wild conspiracy theory created by pro-lifers or something. Got it.
Anyway, true to form, the media had to come rushing in to defend her. The Washington Post‘s Glenn Kessler weighed in with a fact-check tweet that sounded like he wrote it on his phone while sitting on the toilet. His fact-check stunk so bad that experts quickly chimed in to point out how wrong he was when he claimed that a fetal “heartbeat” is merely electrical activity generated by the embryo that the ultrasound interprets.
Despite Kessler being utterly destroyed on Twitter for his incorrect tweet, the pro-abortion movement can sleep soundly knowing that the concept of fetal heartbeats is slowly being chucked down the memory hole. Planned Parenthood has now updated its website to align with Abrams’ incorrect opinion that fetal heartbeats at six weeks are not really fetal heartbeats.
According to the Washington Free Beacon, “On Friday, Planned Parenthood changed its website, without any notice, to say that, at five to six weeks of pregnancy, ‘a part of the embryo starts to show cardiac activity. It sounds like a heartbeat on an ultrasound, but it’s not a fully-formed heart—it’s the earliest stage of the heart developing.'”
According to an archived version, the page used to say that “a very basic beating heart and circulatory system develop,” at that stage of pregnancy.
So why is Planned Parenthood trying to pretend fetal heartbeats don’t happen at six weeks? It’s not just because of what Stacey Abrams said. It’s because of fetal heartbeat laws that restrict abortions after the detection of the heartbeat. In other words, it’s a business decision.
If their position is that a fetal heartbeat doesn’t happen until later in pregnancy, then the Democrats whose campaigns they fund can use that talking point to try to extend the period for which an abortion can be obtained in states with fetal heartbeat restrictions. Planned Parenthood isn’t merely taking orders from Stacey Abrams; they’re trying to stay in business.
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